


let me treasure you

by tosca1390



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-10
Updated: 2014-06-10
Packaged: 2018-02-03 23:11:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1759309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>If you had told Rina Monahan that she would be sleeping with an Arrow one day – and not just any arrow, but the leader of the Arrow squad – she would have laughed hysterically at you. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	let me treasure you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magisterequitum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/gifts).



*

If you had told Rina Monahan that she would be sleeping with an Arrow one day – and not just any arrow, but the leader of the Arrow squad – she would have laughed hysterically at you. 

Maybe also punched you in the face for the sheer audacity of the joke. 

However – somehow – in the summer after the awakening of the empaths and the rollout of the Honeycomb Protocol, Rina finds herself sleeping with an Arrow. Not just any Arrow, but the leader of the Arrow Squad. 

It should be awkward, she thinks. Everyone thinks it’s strange. He’s a powerful Psy, trained in the most rigorous and debilitating of programs, a trained killer; and she – she’s a DarkRiver soldier, a leopard with a high tolerance for pain and a high sexual drive. She’s aggressive and affectionate and stubborn as hell, with a mouth that sometimes gets her into too much trouble. On paper, they look absolutely insane together.

Somehow, between running into each other on empath compound perimeter duty, it happened. It works. Her cat took one look at him and thought _yes_. Her instincts have yet to lead her astray. 

Still. It’s a little… strange. 

*

The first time Rina kisses Aden, they are in an open clearing in DarkRiver territory, surrounded on all sides by lush trees. July sun beats down on them as they walk through a complicated martial arts sequence – a point of bonding between them. She likes the smoothness of the art, likes the tone and power it provides; he is an expert. 

_Of course he is. He’s a trained killer_ , a voice in the back of her mind whispers. 

Pulling her sweat-damp tank top away from her middle, Rina watches as Aden paces the clearing, his steps even and careful. This is the tenth time they have met in this clearing. At first, they were silent, sitting together in an odd companionable quiet. On the third meeting, he asked her name. She gave it to him during their fifth meeting, and asked him to spar. Now, they spar consistently, and during their little breaks for water or muscle cramps, they speak of the Net, of the world, of little things. 

They have not gone too deeply into the personal. Rina can’t help but wonder what he might have to say. 

“Tired?” she asks, cheeky. 

He levels an even dark stare onto her. Her cat shivers right under the skin, purrs its want. Rina wets her lips, quelling the primal instinct to take. This is no ordinary man or changeling. 

“My reserves are still full,” he says. 

“Well I’m beat,” she says, plopping down to stretch out in the grass. She shades her eyes from the sun with her hand, sighing. “Come sit.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he walks over and sits next to her, his legs in their standard Arrow black trousers stretching out in front of him. His hip brushes hers. 

She turns her head, peering at him. “Mercy says you’re a medic.”

“That is my official position.”

Biting back a grin, she rolls onto her side and props herself up on her elbow. The grass is cool and soft beneath them. “What do you really do?” she teases. 

He blinks at her, the sun lighting on the sharp angles of his cheeks, the gleam of his black hair as it curls over his t-shirt collar. “What makes you think I am not a medic?”

She shrugs awkwardly. “A hunch.”

There is something of a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Animal instinct.”

“It’s served me well so far,” she says. 

For a long moment he doesn’t say anything. Then, he shifts down onto his back, stretching out beside her, his arms bent under his head. Her cat rolls around under her skin, delighted at his concession. Something like playing, she thinks. 

“I don’t tell people,” he says, voice oddly full and deep. “It is a strategic decision.”

Wetting her lips, she leans in closer to him. “I get it,” she says. 

He meets her gaze. “I would tell you, though.”

Her pulse flutters in her throat. “Why?”

“Instinct, I suppose,” he says. “Trust.”

In the summer sunlight, with clouds floating above them, she leans down and brushes her lips against his. 

When she looks at him once more, cheeks flushed, he stares at her, gaze startled. 

“You kissed me,” he says, voice quiet. 

“You act like it’s never happened to you before,” she says lightly, in an effort to control the urge to run. 

His gaze flickers away. “It hasn’t.”

For a moment, she’s floored. Aden is a strikingly handsome man, powerful and tall and lithe and dark, his eyes tilted upwards and his cheekbones stark. Who wouldn’t want to put their hands all over him?

And then, she remembers all the conversations with her friends in SnowDancer, about Judd, and Brenna. Remembers Sascha’s soft words about the Arrows with Ivy. They have been trained from young ages, under the strictest of protocols; a few short months of freedom and contact with empaths can’t erase years of conditioning. 

“Did it hurt?” she asks quietly, cursing her brashness. 

Aden lifts a hand to cup her cheek. The skin to skin contact startles her, invigorates her. The pads of his fingers are callused and cool against her cheekbone. 

“No. But I do not think I responded appropriately.”

Then, he brings her face down to his once more. 

She is slow with him, gentle almost; her lips teach his how to move, to shift, to breathe. She licks against his bottom lip and she feels the shudder through his body. Then, he licks back and she shuts her eyes, leaning over him so close that her hair, loose from its ponytail, falls like curtains around their faces. He cups her face with both his hands and pulls her in closer and she ends up sprawled across his chest, the lush weight of her breasts pressed to his firm muscles, his tongue in her mouth. Everything in her arches into him, her cat stretched out languidly with hot waves of desire. They seem to kiss forever, in the pool of sunlight, the sweat and dark spice of him filling her nose. Arousal blooms within her, and she can scent his own, clean and sharp and nascent. 

He _wants_ her, she thinks with deep pleasure. He wants her as she wants him. 

“Do you like this?” he asks against her wet mouth, blinking dark heavy eyes up at her as they catch their breaths. His hands slide over her spine, the thin material of her tank top. 

She nods, perched on his chest. “You’re good.”

“I will do better,” he says evenly. “An Arrow’s greatest tool is repetition and practice.”

She shivers at the cool words, hearing the thick deep intent behind them. “So, you want to do it again?”

“Much like our sparring, we will only improve with repeated sessions,” he says, angling his mouth as she lowers her head once more. 

They do nothing but kiss, but by the time he leaves the clearing, her throat is marked and his hands have explored the full curves of her waist and breasts. There is the promise of more. She has a lot to teach him, she thinks with a smile. 

She does so, over their meetings and visits, with alacrity. Soon, he is spending the night at her house and negotiating free passage with Lucas. With a straight face, he says that he will be spending time of a personal nature with one of the female senior soldiers. Sascha tries desperately not to laugh, as does Rina; Lucas, a little red in the face, accepts the terms. 

Teaching him sex is one of the great pleasures of her life, and he likes it. Just because they end up talking in between rounds, sharing small pieces of their lives with each other as he explores the concept of oral sex and she tells him how to flick his tongue and use his teeth, doesn’t mean anything. 

Until it does. 

*

“So, you’re dating.”

Across the scuffed kitchen table, Rina glares at Kit. “Shut up.”

Kit shrugs, all lean muscled power and lithe sinew under his sweatshirt and jeans. The early morning sun gleams off his thick hair. She gets why all the girls in both Packs – DarkRiver and SnowDancer – slobber after her brother, she really does. Still, it’s annoying as hell. She’s coming in off of a night shift around the empath training compound, and he’s about to head out for a city rotation; these morning breakfasts at dawn are a tradition, a way of staying in touch with the only blood family she has left. Pack is family, but Kit is her baby brother, no matter how many battles he fights at her side. 

“He’s here like three nights a week, Reen. You’re dating,” he says, smiling that shit-eating grin of his. 

“We’re having a lot of great sex,” she counters, watching as his face blanches. 

“It’s more than that,” he retorts once the green fades away from his skin, his hands wrapped around his coffee mug. “You made him breakfast last week. True, you mixed powder he gave you into water, but you still did it.”

“I’m very polite to my guests,” she retorts, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. She wants a shower and a long sleep in her bed, alone. She doesn’t want her brother interrogating her on her dating life or the lack thereof. Especially when it’s still something she’s trying to accustom herself to, a man in her life on a regular basis. 

Shrugging, Kit finishes his coffee and rises from the table. “Aden’s an Arrow. He’s not taking this casually,” he says as he walks to the sink and turns his back to her. 

She gapes at the back of his head. “Please, please tell me you aren’t talking to him about me.”

“He stops in sometimes when you’re not here. I’m around. We talk,” he says with a shrug, rinsing out his mug. 

“Kit!”

Her brother glances at her over his shoulder. “The dude’s just learning how to live without Silence. You really think he’s just using you for sex?”

She bristles, her cat raising its hackles. “Others have.”

“That’s because they’re dumbasses who didn’t know how to handle you,” he retorts. 

The unintended compliment soothes her slightly. “And Aden does?”

Kit smirks. “You haven’t kicked him out yet.”

“Go away,” she grits out through her teeth, shoving a hand through her loose yellow hair. It’s greasy and limp from a night of shifting and running, and she feels the need for sleep like sandpaper against her eyes. 

“For the record,” he says as he heads out of the kitchen, “I like him. And I think he likes you – not that he knows what that means.”

Rina sits alone in the yellow-streaked kitchen, tracing fingertips over clawmarks left from when she and Kit were babies. Right under her skin, her cat settles and sighs, sniffing at the lingering scent of Aden on her clothes and in her hair. Her muscles ache from overuse, her shoulders and neck soaked in tension. She had told Aden yesterday morning not to come over today, but now – now, both her and her cat miss him. It’s an odd sensation. They’ve avoided labeling whatever this is so far – but she wonders if that’s going to do more harm than good in the long run. 

Kit yells a goodbye as he hustles out of the cabin. Sighing, Rina drags herself up from the kitchen table and up the stairs. She tries to press thoughts of Aden out of her mind with a hot shower, attempting to ease taxed muscles, and runs a brush through her damp hair before she crawls into bed naked, lowers the shades with a sleepy murmur, and falls asleep. 

The smell of cooking bacon and butter wakes her. She blinks, stares at the clock on her bedside table. It’s just past noon. Mind groggy with six hours of sleep, she sits up and yawns. Tammy must be here, or Dezi – everyone seems to hover more now that Aden is an accepted fixture of some kind in her life. Arrows come and go now – Vasic, Ivy’s husband, is often seen in meetings with Lucas, Aden, and Hawke Snow. But there have been no Arrows so intimately connected with anyone in the Pack before, and though they all have Brenna and Judd as an example of how these relationships can bloom, Rina can sense the concern. 

(Sascha, however, is all pleasure at the events. _You can teach each other so much,_ she had said to Rina warmly the last time she saw the alpha’s mate and empath. _I think this is such a wonderful connection._ )

Whatever it is, it weighs on Rina’s cat. Two months of casual sex and conversation – such as a conversation with an Arrow can go – and Rina is satisfied physically, but there’s something lacking in the emotional, primal side of her. Not that she can admit that to anyone; she’s built her reputation on fierceness, on strength, on stubbornness, on the physical. A female soldier is held to a higher standard than a male, no matter what the alphas and sentinels and lieutenants like to say. Mercy watches out specifically for her fellow women, but Rina knows she has to play the game and prove herself even more than the men do to stabilize her position in Pack. 

She doesn’t like the unknown. And Aden – and his expectation past sex – seem to be an unknown. 

Pulling on a black t-shirt of his left from last week and leggings, she pads downstairs, her hair in a messy wavy bun. Expecting a fellow Pack member, she stops in the kitchen doorway, astonished. 

Aden, in a black t-shirt and jeans, is cooking. At her stove. 

Cooking. 

No one has cooked for her since her mom – 

Rina swallows, her hands fisting at her sides. 

“I may have burned the eggs I attempted to scramble,” he says, not turning around. 

“What are you doing here?” she asks, voice still thick from sleep. 

“It is my day off. Go back upstairs,” he says, still facing the stove. 

“Aden, I just got off shift, I can’t – “

“I am not here to continue to explore sexual activity with you, Rina,” he says, glancing at her over his shoulder. “No matter how sorely I am tempted.”

She bites her lips on a smile, leaning against the doorframe. “Did you miss me?”

“I just saw you. I see you right now,” he says, prodding at the egg mixture in the pan. There is dark stubble on his chin. She wonders, her chest aching, when the last time he slept was. 

“So you missed me,” she teases. 

“I will bring this to you. In bed. Apparently, that is something women enjoy.”

“Have you been testing this out on other women?” she drawls. Both woman and cat don’t particularly like the idea of that. _Ours_ , the cat murmurs, and Rina swallows at the blatant possessiveness. 

She has never attempted to claim a man before. She wonders how this man would react. 

Aden looks at her fully, face even and set in clean lines. “No. Only you,” he says firmly. “I only want to test things with you.”

The lump in her throat grows. She grins a little, dragging her toes against the smooth hardwood floor of the cabin that is too big for two young adults. “Okay then.”

“Are you testing things with other men?” he asks. 

“No,” she says, fluttering a hand in the air. “God, why would I? I have you all trained up,” she teases lightly. 

He doesn’t smile, but she senses his amusement somehow. Her cat wants to curl up in it, curl up with him. “Good. Go back to bed.”

She sighs, long-suffering, and turns to the stairs. “You know, I don’t take well to orders.”

“Consider it a suggestion,” he calls after her, and she grins. 

The eggs are terrible, lumpy and oversalted, and the bacon is burned. She eats every bite. 

“How did you know how to do that?” she asks when he comes back from cleaning up the kitchen and taking her dishes downstairs. She stretches out in bed in just his t-shirt, sighing. 

Aden lays down next to her and she immediately curls up into him, against his chest. His large lean hands smooth over her back, his fingers sinking into the nape of her neck and soothing the tense muscles there. “I read a manual.”

“A cookbook?” she murmurs. 

“If that’s what they call them, then yes.”

She pokes his ribs, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder. “Do you guys have a manual for everything?”

After their first time together, he told her of Judd’s research file, and Vasic’s manuals, one of which is apparently the Kama Sutra. She laughed so hard she cried, and asked him to demonstrate his favorite technique. They then explored oral sex for over an hour, and she was left wrung out and breathless in the best way. 

“We like to operate by the book,” he says, his chin brushing the top of her hair. 

She arches and stretches against him, a low purr rumbling in her chest as he massages her neck and shoulders. “Repetition and practice.”

“It serves us well enough,” he murmurs. 

Smoothing a hand down his chest, she presses a kiss to his sternum, his skin warm through his shirt. “Thanks for coming by.”

His grip on her tightens. “Yes. Well. I – I missed you.”

Something clenches deep in her belly, a knowing she cannot face yet. She lifts her head to meet his gaze, dark and unyielding. 

“I missed you too,” she says, and kisses him. 

He is very good at kissing. 

*

The next day, Rina goes into the city and purchases a full stock of Psy-friendly nutrient drinks. They are tasteless and foul, and they are what Aden drinks. She also buys a few boxes of nutrient bars. 

When she stocks them in the kitchen pantry, Kit snorts. 

“Shut up,” she mutters. 

“You’re so dating,” is all he says in reply.

Rina does not have a good track record in terms of _dating_. She is highly sexed, highly dominant, highly aggressive; men in the Pack see her either as a sister, a daughter, or a sex kitten.

She doesn’t know how to date effectively. As she stocks her own kitchen with things Aden will like, she wonders if that makes this official. 

*

When Aden comes over next, appearing quietly and silently as he does (she assumes Vasic teleports him, as there is never a car outside her house), she is eating dinner alone, steak and potatoes and apple pie from Tammy at her table. Summer is arcing into autumn, the nights finally beginning to cool even as the days stay warm and sunny. At the very tops of the trees, the leaves are beginning to turn brown. It’s her favorite time of year, sweet soft nights and warm days. 

She looks up as Aden walks in, in his official Arrow uniform, his leather-synth jacket snug at his shoulders. “Hi.”

He tilts his head, looking at her. “Eating alone?”

“Not anymore. Come sit and eat.”

Lips twitching, he shrugs off his jacket and drapes it over the chair across from her. He seems more at ease every time he spends the night – or day – or evening – here with her. This pleases her cat; she wants him to feel at home here. She wants him to want to be here, with her. 

The realization settles over her comfortably, if frighteningly. She wets her lips and watches as he moves to the cabinets. 

“Got you something,” she says he opens them, comes face to face with the boxes of nutrition bars. “But you have to promise to try the pie Tammy made.”

Aden stares at the nutrition bars for a long, taut moment. She sets her fork down and straightens her shoulders, nerves skittering under her skin. 

“This implies I should expect to be here at length,” he says at last. 

Swallowing hard, she blinks away the sudden hot wetness in her eyes. Rina Monahan is a fierce, intelligent, ruthless fighter; she doesn’t _cry_. “I thought – I thought you might want food here, that you like.”

He looks at her then, dark gaze glittering. He is so solid and fierce and forthright and sarcastic and handsome, and she wants him to be _hers_. The ache is there, something she cannot put words to. 

“Thank you,” he says quietly, looking utterly exhausted. Worry pricks at her, her cat rubbing close under her skin. “Rina, this is – thank you.”

She shifts uncomfortably. “I – I don’t do this for everyone,” she says, wanting to be clear. “I’m doing this because it’s you. And I want you here whenever you want to be here.”

Staring at her, he fists his hands at his sides. He’s had to do something difficult today; the tension radiates off of him in waves. “I want to be here all the time.”

The breath whooshes out of her in a loud exhale. “Fuck, Aden.”

He crosses to her, lifts her out of her chair. “The manuals tell me that in a courtship, dinner is expected,” he says as he kisses her jaw, the line of her throat. 

Rina smiles shakily, running her hands over his back, his chest. His fingers tangle in the loose waves of her hair. “We’re eating dinner now.”

“No,” he says, inching her back against the kitchen counter. He lifts her up by her thighs and she shivers, liking the way he handles her. It’s nice to be with a man who isn’t afraid to be aggressive with her, always aware of her boundaries. Aden is careful to ask, to take only what she wants to give; soon, she thinks, she will want to give him everything. “In a public setting. Where I pay.”

“A date,” she says, delighted as she kisses his face, his throat. Her fingers pluck at the buttons of his shirt. 

“Yes,” he says, smoothing his hands over her scalp as they come to cup her face. “I would like to take you on a date.”

That awareness is there, the knowing she will soon be unable to deny. She digs her fingers into the hard muscle of his shoulders and smiles, deeply pleased. “That’s a serious step. Are you sure you’re up for it?”

He presses his hips against hers, eyes gleaming. “I am positive I’m up for it.”

She rolls her eyes. “I love it when you tell jokes,” she says dryly.

Leaning in, he kisses her to quiet her, his tongue licking into her mouth with a wet possession. She wraps her arms around his neck and sighs and moans as he fucks her right there in the kitchen, with her dinner half-eaten and the cabinet door still open. Later, they take a nutrition bar and the apple pie up to her bedroom and eat there, where he tries the pie gamely and decides it isn’t terrible, though the nutritional value is nil. 

Rina is falling hard; at least she isn’t the only one, she thinks as she stretches over him to sleep, his palm heavy on the small of her back. 

They’re falling together. 

*


End file.
